photo by Claudia A. De La Garza, more at cadography.com

The Ku Klux Klan famously encouraged and exploited anti-Catholic prejudice to amplify xenophobia and racism for their anti-immigrant cause. The details may seem absurdly unfamiliar to younger people today, but we are familiar with modern racism against Mexican American people, and families who’ve immigrated from other Latin American countries.

If we saw a rise of protests against Spanish-speaking church congregations today, we’d recognize this as a manifestation of that bigotry.

The ongoing obsession with immigration, even when packaged for PR with caveats like “but they’re illegal,” has the effect of constantly reminding Mexican Americans that they are not welcome here. The older folks already know it, of course.

But every day, young children get to learn for the first time that they are not wanted. In what is often the only nation they’ve ever known, the only place they could even imagine belonging, they are told in so many ways that they are not welcome and will never be welcome. Not because of anything they’ve done. Just because of who they are.

Yes, some of their parents broke the law. Most Americans break the law. The white suburban teenager who smokes pot and downloads music is breaking the law pretty much every day, but why don’t we say “he is illegal?” Why are we careful to judge his actions as illegal, but not his very being?

Even legal immigrants from Mexico and other Latin American countries experience the collective punishment. If you look like you might be Mexican, you’re regularly treated as suspect. When illegitimacy is attributed to whole groups of people, we are telling them and their children that we will never accept them as real Americans.

photo by Claudia A. De La Garza

If demonstrators were making and mocking caricatures of the Virgin Mary in Arizona today, we would recognize such Catholic-baiting as a manifestation of nativists’ anxiety about immigrants. We would be especially concerned about how this makes young people feel unwelcome here.

We’d recognize it because fear of Mexicans is a long-time component of our national discourse. It’s on our radar, finally, sort of. Most Americans weren’t thinking about Islam at all eleven years ago.

Drawing caricatures of Muhammad to make a statement is collective punishment.

Yes, a few Muslims have reacted violently to depictions of their prophet. That doesn’t make it fair to make statements that are hurtful toward the rest of our Muslim neighbors.

Don’t assert that caricatures of Muhammad aren’t hurtful. You wouldn’t even know. People in the dominant group don’t have to be aware of what others experience. That was the point of my last post, on how to treat atheists like human beings. Most people aren’t even aware of how saying “you have no basis for morality” is hurtful, because they’ve never had to consider it from a nontheist’s perspective.

American Muslims are trying to tell us that we are making them and their children feel unwelcome. We need to start learning how to listen.

I suppose that means we won’t be seeing any blasphemy in the United States today, since our rights to commit blasphemy here are not in question.

There won’t be anyone telling Muslims that they aren’t welcome in America today, right?.

And I’m sure the CFI won’t be advancing blasphemy for blasphemy’s sake. They won’t be simply promoting collections of blasphemy on Facebook. Of course not.

Of course the CFI would never stoop to the level of Sarah Palin, by claiming merely to support rights that are not in question, as a distraction from the real purpose of promoting the content of hate speech.

“If Bush could ban media pictures of dead [soldiers'] coffins returning because it would be harmful in demoralizing the troops, maybe we should ban media outlets from showing any Qurans burning. After all aren’t we trying to protect our troops? Is this not about national security? This question is being asked not to have a fast and hard policy where the government comes in enacts censorship but instead to make sure we are not giving lip service to the brave men and women we say on the battle field who we say we wanna protect.”

That’s an interesting question. The answer requires some investigation of how the coffin ban was enacted.

When most people think of a publishing ban, they imagine a journalist holding sensitive documents or photos, and the government obtaining a court order that outlaws their distribution. This is called prior restraint.

As far as I can tell, though I might be wrong about this, that’s not what happened in the case of the coffin ban. Instead, the military’s policy was that anyone who published coffin photos would be denied future access to military-controlled areas.

The military also practiced a form of what might be called prior restraint, by actively preventing journalists from getting near coffins to photograph them.

These two policies added up to a pretty effective ban. But there were no court orders preventing a journalist who could somehow get photos from publishing them. Such photos were difficult to get, and publication would result in future restrictions of access, but neither policy constituted an obvious case of what would normally be understood as prior restraint. This is important, because among forms of censorship, prior restraint is the most likely to be ruled unconstitutional in court.

And prior restraint is the kind of censorship that would be required to prevent publication of photos of Qurans burning. This would be much more likely to be ruled unconstitional than the coffin ban. (That’s not to say that the restrictions on publicizing coffins didn’t also amount to unconstitutional interference. I think there’s a strong case that they did. But it wasn’t obviously prior restraint, which is a whole different level of unconstitutionality.)

What about preventing media from even getting close enough to photograph the burning Qurans, like they were prevented from accessing coffins? It’s a harder case to make. The coffins were on military property, and though that’s technically publicly-owned property, it’s very heavily restricted already. The public’s acceptance of these restrictions provides courts with an easy excuse for tolerating further restrictions. On the other hand, Terry Jones is trying to invite media onto his private property, where he generally has control and can invite or expel guests at will. It’s more difficult for the courts to say no, you may not invite the media to your private property.

At least the Associated Press has voluntarily chosen to be responsible, by not distributing images of Qurans being burned:

“Should the event happen on Saturday, the AP will not distribute images or audio that specifically show Qurans being burned, and will not provide detailed text descriptions of the burning. With the exception of these specific images and descriptions, we expect to cover the Gainesville event, in all media, placing the actions of this group of about 50 people in a clear and balanced context.

AP policy is not to provide coverage of events that are gratuitously manufactured to provoke and offend. In the past, AP has declined to provide images of cartoons mocking Islam and Jews. AP has often declined to provide images, audio or detailed descriptions of particularly bloody or grisly scenes, such as the sounds and moments of beheadings and shootings, displays of severed heads on pikes and images of hostages who are displayed by hostage-holders in an effort to intimidate their adversaries and advance their cause. Decisions are made on a case-by-case basis.”

But I’d like to know why Terry Jones is hardly ever called out in the corporate media for using racist talking points like “Obama is President because he is black.” Racism and Islamophobia very often go hand in hand. Bringing these connections to public attention may help more people understand anti-Muslim activity in the United States today.

I think this misses the point. The framing is too broad, and encapsulates the wrong issue.

There is never a time when religious freedom should be opposed. But there are times when prayer should be opposed. Specifically, when public school teachers or other government employees try to lead children in prayer during school hours, that is a violation of the First Amendment’s establishment clause.

Rhetoric about a “war on prayer” appeals to those who have been complaining ever since 1962 that they can no longer force other people’s children to pray as dictated by the government, and to those who want to violate the establishment clause by diverting taxpayers’ money to their religious institutions.

This is framing that appeals to the grievances of dominant groups who want to oppress others.

And this same framing fails to appeal to many secular people. Religious freedom is something we can all appreciate the value of, but prayer itself is not so universally regarded. I know that some atheists, including myself, often wish that some religious people (you know who I’m talking about) would pray less ostentatiously. To some, a war on prayer doesn’t sound too bad.

There is a better way. If you must use a polarizing war metaphor, it’s possible to find one that can appeal to more Americans, without reinforcing oppressive groups’ entitlement to dominate.

Call it a war on Americans’ freedom of religious choice. For brevity, a war on religious choice.

An American Muslim man is being interviewed about a mosque expansion, necessary for the growing local population, that was temporarily blocked by the city council. The interviewer asks him whether Muslims should participate in U.S. politics.

He responds that when politics can reduce public harm, Muslims are obligated to participate. “Theoretically, it is very easy to say [avoid political involvement], but practically, we consider Islam as a dynamic faith… Because really, we are part of this society, we are citizens. What will harm them, will harm us, and sometimes what will harm them harms us first. So how can I isolate myself from the entire society?”

Other guest pieces in this series:

A Call to (Open) Arms by Lucy Gubbins

Major Distractions: I Know You Are, But Who Are We? by Bryan Parys

How Atheism Became a Religion at Stanford by Lewis Marshall

Knowing Religion, and Why It Matters by Josh Oxley

What Can Interfaith Mean to an Atheist? by Kelsey Sheridan

A Committed Christian’s Atheist Heroes by Amber Hacker

I’m a Bad Atheist by Kate Fridkis

Here’s what happens. You’re talking about something important, probably involving someone’s legal rights, which your debating opponent wants to obstruct. They cite scripture, like it should matter to you. But you’re ready for this, since there’s only so much scripture and you’ve heard it all before. You cite another verse which contradicts the first, or which is so horrific that it should make them think twice.

This can be fun if you like running in circles, but you’ve just lost the real argument. By discussing scripture, you’ve conceded that scripture is worth discussing. And maybe it is, on some other terms, some other day. But this argument was supposed to be about real people’s real needs. Now you’ve implicitly agreed that it’s acceptable to focus on this text instead of human suffering and human rights.

Much of the time, this approach fails to change anyone’s mind. It relies on the usually erroneous assumption that the other person will agree with you on some obvious meaning of the words on the page. This is peculiar for atheists; those who see scripture as fiction should expect that different people will find different meanings in fiction. Regardless, it ignores the basic dynamics of extant religions. Practitioners constantly struggle to make religion meaningful in a changing world, responding to the unique circumstances and needs of a particular community or individual. This is one reason why it’s insufficient to “look at the Koran and say, ‘I know what Muslims believe!’” Interpretation of a text depends heavily on the individual’s history and surrounding community, and wouldn’t be of much use if it didn’t.

One response to the changing world is fundamentalism, often falsely portayed as a return to the original faith. Fundamentalism is a modern invention, characterized by a fear of the modern world and an indifference to changing human needs. Though fundamentalists do not agree with what an atheist might call the obvious meaning of scripture, they are obsessed with promoting their interpretation as the only possible meaning, and denouncing other groups’ attempts to find more humane interpretations that respond to human rights.

Whenever atheists allow the conversation to be about scripture instead of human needs, we are enabling the kind of thinking that empowers fundamentalism. When atheists go so far as to insist that religious people should not “pick and choose” more humane interpretations of scripture, we are actually demanding fundamentalism. (I do not agree that fundamentalists are necessarily consistent or that other religious believers are necessarily inconsistent. But these characterizations are common among more naive atheists, echoed by Sam Harris, and so must be addressed.)

There is a better way. Instead of engaging with scripture, ignore it. Demand that your debating opponent present secular justifications for policy. Reiterate that scripture means nothing to you, and you will only listen to arguments that refer to agreed-upon physical reality. Keep the discussion on human needs, where it belongs.

Sabir Ibrahim:

Many Muslims may be receptive to the above concerns, but feel that they would be compromising their Islamic principles by voting against a ban on same-sex marriage. However, this need not be the case. A vote against a ban on same-sex marriage does not necessarily constitute a vote of moral approval for homosexual lifestyles. No ballot measure can change Islam’s clear and unambiguous stance on homosexuality. Rather, Muslims may disapprove of a practice while recognizing the right of other communities to apply their own distinct norms within the context of a pluralistic society.

This principle is not without parallel in the Islamic scholarly tradition. As noted by Dr. Sherman Jackson in his paper “Shari’ah, Democracy and the Modern Nation State: Some Reflections on Islam, Popular Rule and Pluralism,” tenth century Hanbali jurist Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya held that the Abbasid State ought to tolerate the Zoroastrian practice of self-marriage whereby men married their mothers or sisters. According to Ibn Qayyim, as long as disputes involving such marriages were not brought before Muslim courts and as long as Zoroastrians considered self-marriage permissible according to their own religious laws, Muslim authorities should not interfere with the practice despite its clear conflict with Islamic Law. If classical Islamic scholars have tolerated the divergent norms of non-Muslim religious communities that came under Muslim rule, then why is it wrong for Muslim-Americans to exercise the same tolerance as a minority community within a non-Muslim society?

Michael Muhammad Knight:

There is a strong temptation—I myself had felt it at one time—for Muslims to seek acceptance by insisting that in America’s culture war, we hold much in common with the Christian Right. Some Muslims would contend that Islam is not anti-American at all, precisely because their values align with the Latter-Day Saints who organized and funded for Prop 8. On some level, this seems natural, and it’s not totally off the mark. However, it also imitates an ugly precedent in American history: European immigrants who, when treated with scorn and suspicion by Anglo-Saxons, sought acceptance as fully “white” by joining in the lynching of black people.

Muslims who think that a shared Abrahamic morality makes them more American are missing something big: the defining “culture war” of this moment is not Queer vs. Straight, Islam vs. the West, or Christians vs. Non-Christians: it is Tolerance vs. Intolerance, Equality vs. Inequality. In this war, as Intolerance pulls out its hair with panic and issues the same irrational screams about Muslims and Queers (They’re imposing their ways on us! They’re taking over! They’re destroying America!), the overturning of Prop 8 and the apparent triumph of the Cordoba House are victories for the same side.

Sabir Ibrahim again:

However, the question is not one of how Muslims might feel about homosexuality or same-sex marriage from a moral perspective, but of what stance Muslim-Americans should take on the legalization of same-sex marriage in the United States. And the answer should not be determined by appealing to personal or even community morality, but to political principles and community interests.

As a religious minority, Muslim-Americans subscribe to a set of social values and cultural norms that differ in a number of respects from those of the Christian majority. Thus, it is in the interests of Muslims to oppose efforts to enshrine the values of any religious group as law, even in instances where those values may not differ from our own. In a secular, pluralistic society such as the United States, Muslims are best served by advocating for the principle that the government ought not to involve itself in personal matters such as marriage, particularly on the basis of (from a secular perspective) arbitrary religious criteria.

The recent spate of campaigns against the construction of new mosques around the country has been led by churches and Christian groups. Prominent right-wing Christian pastors such as Franklin Graham and Pat Robertson regularly insult the Prophet Muhammad (SAW) and denounce Islam as a tool of the devil. A church in Gainesville, FL announced that it would be commemorating the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks by publicly burning copies of the Quran.

The Christian Right has strongly advocated for destructive and imperialistic American foreign policies in the Muslim World. And the rise in xenophobic, extremist rhetoric from evangelical leaders on not just homosexuality, but issues ranging from immigration to affirmative action indicates that the politics of the Christian Right are governed by fear and intolerance, not morality. Though I am not suggesting that Muslims should support the legalization of same-sex marriage simply because Christians oppose it, we must be wary of lending our support to the efforts of a constituency whose opposition to gay rights is derived from the same hatred and intolerance that gives rise to its campaigns against Islam and Muslims.

On this and other issues, Muslims must avoid knee-jerk reactions that are driven more by emotion than preserving our community’s best interests. If we are to argue for equal rights as Americans, we must uphold equal rights even for those Americans with whom we might otherwise disagree.

The current environment in which mainstream political figures openly label Muslims as a deviant people intent on destroying America should give us pause before we join a movement to deny equal rights to another besieged minority battered with the same accusations.

Now some comments. OmarG:

I’m glad this article was published here because I’ve not quite decided how to view the matter. I personally do not recognize marriage between two persons of the same gender. However, I am just as uncomfortable having the government deny certain citizens any specific rights. I just don’t see how its Constitutionally possible and how its consistent with a democracy and freedom.

Ayman Fadel:

the movie Philadelphia with Denzel Washington and Tom Hanks changed my opinion a lot on this issue. Marriage today in the U.S. involves a transfer of rights related to everything from health insurance, estates, medical power of attorney and even your card at the local video store. So it’s just not fair to deny a portion of the citizenry those rights and make them have to spend a lot of money at a lawyer’s office to enforce those rights through legal documents.

Arain, Nizam:

However, I believe we should go further: not simply “tolerating” same-sex marriage for non-Muslims out of a sense of pluralistic principle (or simply for self-interest or a quid pro quo between minority groups); but rather pushing for full and open acceptance of gay and lesbian Muslims as co-equals of straight Muslims in our families, mosques, and communities, and working to reform those aspects of traditional Islamic law that discriminate on the basis of gender or sexual orientation.

Not all Muslims share the same concept of “Muslim family values”, and we need to stop applying feel-good terminology in ways that exclude and marginalize people in our communities.

Wallada:

I don’t think that it is responsible or moral to ignore the intersections and overlappings between LGBTQ and Muslim communities. For instance, when Muslim kids are thrown out of their homes by their parents for being gay, or lesbian, or trans, what happens to them?

Or, what happens to gay or lesbian Muslims who live double lives and finally crack from the strain? Or, are railroaded into straight marriages which finally break down and harm innocent people (such as the children of such marriages, and the unsuspecting straight spouses)?

Putting aside for the moment the (to me obvious) point that any religious community worth the name should care about its members and want to spare them and everyone else needless suffering, what about the considerable social and financial costs of the human suffering caused by homophobia to American society at large?

We need to take full responsibility for what religious homophobia does—whether it’s fire-breathing khutbas which send all LGBTQ people to hell, or more subtle acts of exclusion, which present LGBTQ people and “the Muslim community” as mutually exclusive. It has real, this-world consequences for people’s lives which are often sad and sometimes tragic. And the saddest thing about it is, it doesn’t have to be this way.

“I’ve known a number of people holding various flavours of religious beliefs who have argued with me over the years, and while they start with some differing assumptions, their beliefs have also been internally consistent. I utterly disagree with them, but I respect their integrity.

None of this is the point here, the point is that I really don’t respect, or even tolerate, internally inconsistent beliefs. People who claim, for example, that they believe that personhood starts at conception (thereby making abortion murder) but also support the death penalty. People who claim that any religious text is infallible, and then ignore inconvenient bits of it.”

What about people who are at least aware of their inconsistencies, but find themselves as yet unable to reach a conclusion?

I’m thinking particularly of those who might believe that their religious text demands intolerance of gay people, but who also feel compelled by compassion (maybe they have gay friends or just a lot of empathy) to treat gay people humanely?

My rule of thumb is consequentialist. If their behavior is truly humane, then I respect them, I respect the stamina it takes to maintain their internal struggle, and I respect at least that subset of their beliefs which are humane.

If they are internally consistent and treat people inhumanely, then they are practicing hobgoblinry, all the worse if they have smothered their empathy to achieve consistency. What’s so respectable about that?

In a practical sense, I don’t have the luxury of demanding an internally consistent belief structure from people. I need decent and humane treatment, and legal recognition of my rights, even from people who are absolutely convinced that I don’t deserve those rights.

In a theoretical sense, mere internal consistency doesn’t do much to help humanity reach a consensus on the nature of external reality anyway, so I don’t see what the big respectable deal is.

What about when the religious person in question is gay? What about gay teens in intolerant households, for whom consistency might entail abandonment of their families and the only communities they’ve ever known? It’s a bit much to ask.

Most of us are tyrannized since childhood by rigid expectations and misdirected loyalties which do nothing to alleviate suffering. A person may grow up to accept these impositions, and with them build an internally consistent structure, a prison for the mind, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.

Some call that integrity.

But there’s another kind of integrity, which says that regardless of what I might believe, I can see that you hurt like I hurt.

Mass immigration is also having significant and far reaching demographic impacts. Many London boroughs already have “majority-minority” populations, and others are on a similar demographic trajectory. By late century, mass immigration could have reduced British people to a minority in their homeland.

If they were talking about Britishness as citizenship, British people could not become a numerical minority, because new naturalized citizens and their children would be British people.

The UK Independence Party can talk about British people becoming a minority in Britain only by defining Britishness as exclusively an ethnic trait.

Such definitions are ethnic nationalism. In the case of Britain, it is white nationalism.

The UKIP policy goes on to complain about the decline of white dominance.

The ethnic make-up of Britain has already changed profoundly, and will continue to change dramatically unless mass and uncontrolled immigration is halted soon. Demographers have already predicted that Leicester will become the first British city in which white people are a minority, or as the Commission for Racial Equality euphemistically called it a “plural city”. Demographers at Manchester University have claimed that white people in Birmingham will be overtaken by those of other ethnic origins by 2027. Dr Ludi Simpson has predicted that, “Birmingham is likely to become a minority white city by 2027”.

To vote for a white nationalist party is a racist action.

To vote for a white nationalist party which publicly laments the decline of white dominance is a racist action that cannot be explained as naive.

To encourage others to vote for a white nationalist party is to promote racism.

Pat Condell actively practices and promotes racism.

We can imagine simple cases where the answer is obviously “yes.” Two plus two equals four, no matter how terrified you are of what’s in Room 101. God either does or does not exist, and our desires do not alter the fact.

But those are trivial matters, compared with the grand question of “how should we live our lives?” Even more crucial is the everyday “what should I do here and now, in the circumstances that confront me?” These are the sort of questions that secular humanism is intended to address.

Secular humanism is known for a rational approach to life. That’s not to say it’s the only rational approach, but it’s expressly intended as one. And the third Humanist Manifesto is as good a starting point as any:

“Working to benefit society maximizes individual happiness.”

What’s valued here is human happiness, an emotion. But how to find happiness? Reason is employed to reach that goal; it is suggested that your own happiness will be heightened by working to help others.

“Humans are social by nature and find meaning in relationships.”

What’s valued here is meaning. That’s an emotional sensation, the feeling that your life is worthwhile. Social involvement is reasoned to provide that feeling.

“Life’s fulfillment emerges from individual participation in the service of humane ideals.”

Fulfillment is another emotional state, or perhaps an aggregate set of emotions. In sum we’re referring to the feeling that your life is satisfying, that while there’s always something else you could be chasing after, your current life is at least enough.

“Ethical values are derived from human need and interest as tested by experience. Humanists ground values in human welfare…”

Human welfare, our well-being, is complex. It certainly depends on the physical necessities, food, shelter, clean water. But to gauge another person’s well-being, or our own, it’s not enough to observe that physical needs are met. It’s also necessary to ask, “how are you doing?” As soon as a child can answer that question, he reports his internal emotional state.

Here it is suggested that we should rationally construct our ethics to serve human well-being.

“Humans are an integral part of nature, the result of unguided evolutionary change. Humanists recognize nature as self-existing. We accept our life as all and enough…”

As you can see I’m trying to find both reason and emotion in all these statements. This one presents a bit of a challenge, but I’ll try to do it without hand-waving. It’s certainly true that we are a part of nature (rather than apart from nature). But why is this important enough to bother bringing up? I think it speaks to one of the big questions, “who are we and why are we here?” That’s another approach at meaning, the feeling your life is worthwhile.

“Knowledge of the world is derived by observation, experimentation, and rational analysis.”

It’s basic human nature to value knowledge. We’re curious creatures. The experience of learning even trivial things is physically exciting to the brain. But we value certain types of knowledge more than others. Primarily we are interested in knowing those things which will help us accomplish our goals. Those goals are complex, freedom, fulfillment, and social connection among them, but in each there is a facet of seeking happiness, and avoiding suffering.

So, what should you do here and now, in these circumstances? The answer will necessarily involve checking your own and others’ emotional needs, and attending to those needs with your reason.